Art of Motion Takes Flight

Last Friday evening, 20 young parkour and free running artists hailing from South Africa to Indiana scaled walls, jumped over trucks, and soared to the ground from atop a forklift in Boston’s Government Center. The event, titled “Art of Motion,” was sponsored by Red Bull, and was only the second if its kind in the United States.

Parkour, largely popularized on YouTube, features individuals attempting to get from point A to point B quickly while overcoming various obstacles. Free running is a similar discipline, although there is an added focus on creativity and style. In this particular competition, each of the 20 artists was given 90 seconds to perform on the given apparatuses and was judged based on four criteria: creativity, fluidity, technical difficulty, and execution.

As each of the artists flipped from atop a pickup truck or did a back handspring through a flower bed, the audience screamed words of encouragement and astonishment. All seemed to have some connection to parkour and the athletes. “I did gymnastics for 15 years and along the way met some free running and parkour friends,” said attendee Lindsay Tom, a graduate student at Boston University.

According to Benjamin B. Massenburg ’11, another attendee, parkour began in France as a way to escape during a pursuit on foot. Since then, it has evolved into a form of expression.

“You just express yourself through movement,” said Chris Rowan, a 17-year-old competitor from the Boston area.

Particpants and viewers alike insisted that parkour was an art form rather than a sport. “The way you move is personal to you, and you can’t really say the way this guy moves is right, the way this guy moves is wrong,” said Ryan Doyle, a muscular 26-year-old Englishman from Liverpool who competed in the first “Art of Motion” back in 2007 and served as a judge at Friday’s competition. “In a sport, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.”

Later this year, Doyle will be travelling around the world performing and giving talks on parkour and free running. “I’ve got to go to Mexico,” he said. “Jump off the Aztec pyramids.”